VVDailyPress.com: No property tax drop for Village merchants
Posted By Staff Reporter on September 3, 2009
After hearing impassioned statements from both sides, the board of directors voted not to adjust the large property tax that business owners in the Apple Valley Village pay to help wipe out the area’s blight.
With business slowed to a trickle, a group of merchants who own businesses along the Highway 18 corridor between Navajo and Central roads say the thousands of extra dollars they pay each year to the Apple Valley Village Property and Business Improvement District is putting them on the brink of foreclosure. So the struggling business owners called a special meeting Wednesday to propose slashing the current assessment down to 2 percent of current levels and returning a portion of banked money.
“The unanimous vote by the board spoke for itself,” said Councilman Bob Sagona, who was one of four council members in attendance at the meeting.Larry Cusack, vice chairman of the board and owner of Apple Valley Communications in the Village, said comments Wednesday were pretty evenly split between those who support the current assessment and those who wanted it reduced. But Cusack, who has struggled to find a way to improve the blighted area for a decade, was pleased to hear that no one seemed to want to dump the concept altogether.
“The village just needs some face-lifting,” he said. “It’s been dormant for a long time, and anything we can do to upgrade makes it more appealing and hopefully increases property values, too.”
Still, those who oppose the current tax said the vote doesn’t mean the end of their fight to lower the tax.
Eugene Buchanan, advocate for property owner the Scully Family Trust, said the next option on the table is to call another special meeting and, if they are able to get a quorum of 33 percent of members, they can take a vote of the people rather than the board.
A lawsuit against the PBID’s board has also been mentioned as a way to affect change.
Regardless, Buchanan said, “We did send a very strong message that the owners want to look at ways to provide relief to this assessment.
The board now has an impetus to respond to that request.”
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